After the January 12 earthquake in Haiti, the international
community worked with the Haitian Government to establish an interim
reconstruction commission, the HIRC, to manage the disbursement of international
aid in Haiti. The HIRC is co-led
by former President Bill Clinton, the UN Special Envoy to Haiti, and Haitian
Prime Minister Jean Max Bellerive.
They pushed through the creation of that commission in such a way that
allows them to bypass the Haitian Parliament and all other Haitian institutions
that provide checks and balances to the allocation of aid and funds for a
period of 18 months. Essentially,
the HIRC sits above the Haitian state and has carte blanche to proceed however
they want.

When the HIRC was established, most Haitians were critical
of the structure because it essentially gave the foreign actors full control
putting aside the Haitian Government, Haitian actors and Diaspora, and actually
violated Haiti's Constitution.

Almost a year later, the 12 Haitian members of the HIRC are
expressing frustration and outrage with the awarding of contracts and projects
to foreign actors. The projects do
not meet the needs of the country and are not strategic. Further, the process has excluded Haitian
companies, government institutions and the Diaspora missing a critical
opportunity to build capacity and economic opportunity in the Haitian
community. President Preval has
largely used the HIRC as a political tool believing that awarding no bid contracts
will buy him support for his electoral coup and attempts to maintain power.

Overall, the rebuilding efforts have been progressing at an
unimaginably slow pace. Still 1.7
million people are living in 1,370 makeshift camps without regular access to basic
services, food or water. This is
in spite of historic private and official donations to recovery and
rebuilding. The American people
gave $1.2 billion in private donations, and the American government gave
approximately $2.9 billion. Of
that, $1.2 billion was used by the US military in the aftermath of the
earthquake to deploy troops for security, search and rescue, and immediate
medical aid through the USS Comfort.
Another $1.15 billion was approved by Congress in July but is
languishing in the State Department bureaucracy awaiting release. There is another $500 million being
held in the Senate pending elaboration of how the US Government will pay for
it.

The following speech was delivered by the Haitian members of
the HIRC during the last meeting of the organizations in Santo Domingo last
month. The members are expressing
outrage to the co-Presidents, Mr. Clinton and Prime Minister Bellerive, at
their treatment and the secretive awarding of lucrative contracts to foreign
companies. The following is a
translation of their speech.

ENGLISH
TRANSLATION OF HAITIAN MEMBERS' OF HIRC SPEECH:

Dear Mr. Co-Presidents:

We the 12 Haitian Members of the Haiti Interim
Reconstruction Commission (HIRC) present, in regard to the experience we have accumulated
within the aforementioned commission since its creation, feel a duty to express
concern about the strategic framework put forward in today's agenda.

The 12 Haitian members present here today feel completely
disconnected from the life of the HIRC. Even in this IT era, there exists a critical deficit of
communication and information flow on the part of the Executive Secretariat and
even more so with the Executive Committee despite our role in the governing structure
of this institution, we have to this day, received no report on the activities
of the HIRC.

Contact is established only the day before board meetings. As a result, as members, we have no time
to read, analyze, or digest the information and even less time to react
intelligently to the projects which are being presented to us at the last
minute despite all the official complaints and all the promises made to address
this issue.

Moreover, we are unable to answer, for lack of essential
information, elementary questions from the public or from any interested persons.
A good number of interlocutors
think that there is a complete hold on information.

Mr. Co-Presidents,

No effective functional bond exists between the Executive Secretariat
and the Haitian section of the council, or between the latter and the Executive
Committee. Projects are transmitted to the council in the form of summaries the
day before meetings. Procedural
changes to the online submission of bids for projects are changed without any consultation.

The recruitment of the personnel and the choice of the consulting
firms were made without the knowledge of the Haitian members of the Board of Directors.
No documents were received informing
the council of the criteria for recruiting or the profiles for the candidates. This is also true for the firms which have
received contracts, the Haitian members of the council are unaware of even the
name of these firms that work for the HIRC or their roles.

Taking into account this deficiency, Mr. Co-Presidents, the
Haitian members of the HIRC invited the Executive Director to give a progress
report on the status of collaboration between the two sides (Haitian and
foreign). The invitation was
ignored.

In reality, the Haitian members of the Council appear to fulfill
a puppet role, which is to rubberstamp the decisions adopted by the Executive Director
and the Executive Committee. The
comments of Professor Jean-Marie Bourjolly in his memorandum of October 4, 2010
summarize the situation well. And
we quote: "We must devote the greatest part of our energies to build a plan
with a strategy and tactics that conforms with the general principles stated in
the Action Plan.

Stanley Lucas is a specialist in political development projects. He has worked as a Senior Program Officer in Afghanistan and the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Lucas is currently the Executive Director for for the Washington Democracy (more...)